McDonald County, Missouri - 1977

Once again I thought I might bring a story to light that occured way back... and in my neck of the woods.
Once again, this is brought to you by the late, great Bob Pratt... www.mufon.com...

This flap, or wave, lasted for THREE MONTHS, and had local residents stunned. To this day, I have spoken with 'paranormal investigators' who swore
this was a ghostly experience often referred to as "spook lights" until I told them some particulars of the story, they follow...

Van Knabel

"We saw a big orange glow off in the timber...It looked like a big forest fire and it was coming down off the ridge. It was enough of a red glow that
you could see the dead leaves and limbs between us and the timber.

Suddenly, the glow and everything went out like you turned a light switch. There were six of us and we got into two cars and went over there, but
there was no sign of a fire, no smoke, no glow or nothing. I've seen timber fires before and they just don't go out that quick."

From February into April of 1977 HUNDREDS of McDonald County residents saw UFOs on a daily basis. It got to the point that people would come across
state lines from Arkansas to the South and Oklahoma to the West to get in on the action. In the end, they had constructed a posse, of sorts,
communicating by CB radio to see who was spotting the "lights" while everyone had taken up stations on hilltops. This was a MASSIVE event.
In fact, in one evening people counted more than 125 cars at a local general store gearing up to go on patrol. (note that McDonald county is a very
small "county" consisting of literally NO large townships, especially in '77... 125 cars is, in fact, a "posse")

The police didn't keep a record of the calls but Mrs. Virgil Hottinger, did, at least in the beginning. An officer of the Southwest Missouri REACT
team, she monitored the emergency CB channel on many nights when UFOs were being seen. (REACT is the acronym for Radio Emergency Associated Citizens
Team, which monitors CB emergency band Channel 9 on a twenty four-hour basis.)

“The first night they were reported – that was February 12, at ten forty two p.m. – I had the CB on Channel 9 and I get this call for help,"
Mrs. Hottinger said. "This man says, 'Lady, you better get somebody over here in a hurry!'

“I said, 'What’s wrong?' He seemed frightened. He said, 'I don't know what it is but it's coming down out of the sky and it's coming right
over my car and almost hit me and it's landed out here in a field.'

“Well, I thought he had been drinking. It was a Saturday night. Within fifteen minutes or so, two more calls came in and somebody said, 'I think
it's helicopters stealing cattle.' We had had that a few years back.” (makes a special note of 'helicopters stealing cattle'... this was in
'77, mind you)

Anyhow, it goes on that by 1 in the morning or so people were getting pretty freaked out and were cursing on the CB stations... lots of them.

Most of the stories that night and in the next couple of weeks were simply glowing balls of lights, often appearing as brush fires.
But there were exceptions...

March 5, 1977 - Lonnie and Debbie Stites

At about 11:30pm on the evening of March 5th Lonnie and Debbie were to deliver a load of wood to a turkey house north of McNatt, Missouri. They never
made it.

According to the witnesses, they were headed to the farm and noticed some peculiar red lights in the distance. Coming closer, the lights rose in the
air directly in front of their truck and proceeded to shine lights on their truck. Meanwhile, a "man" dressed in green coveralls ran down the hill
towards the highway waving his arm at the two...until he was eventually standing right beside the highway.
Mind you this is nearly midnight and according to the witnesses this man in coveralls is waving at them in SUNGLASSES. The witnesses couldn't tell
how the sunglasses adhered to his face as he appeared to have no ears! And oh yeah, he was wearing a skull-cap (pulled so tight that there wasn't a
wrinkle in it.)
Anyhow, they drove past where they were going in a state of shock. In all they went about 20 miles out of their way to avoid the object and refused to
go back.

Nobody is on record seeing this object other than the two mentioned above, but there were some others who saw some weird happenings in the same
general area.

Lawrence McCool's Close Encounter

February 9th is when things started in McDonald county and apparently, on the 16th Lawrence decided to go look for a UFO himself - he found one.
His story relates how he and a buddy went up to a hilltop to look for some objects while his buddy got a call from his wife over the CB radio (I love
how the Ozarkians actually use CB radios to communicate in areas that are basically devoid of civilization) that there was an object near their house.
Well, Lawrence urged his neighbor to run home and that he would stay where he was, waiting for him to return (phantom was his handle).

So Lawrence sits there for an hour watching this orb wax and wane until it finally disappears (this is apparently the same orb phantom went to chase
at his house). Then Ron decides to leave and go home. He makes it four miles until his CB starts acting up. ... Then everything in his truck shuts
down. EVERYTHING. He thinks that maybe he is startled so badly that he hit the brakes hard enough to stop instantly, but he isn't sure.
He found himself face to face with what he assumes was the same object he was watching from afar moments ago. Only now, he is terrified. He likens it
to watching a tiger in a cage and then coming face to face with the same tiger in a back alley. He says he felt like he was under a microscope.

The interesting part about McCools account is that he was on CB the entire time. Until he encountered the object. The Sherriff says he was out of
contact for 20 minutes. McCool thought it was only about 1 minute...

Another instance of high-weirdness with CB radio occured that very same night with Mr. Ronald Cargile.
Hearing a lot of commotion on the radio about sightings, Mr. Cargile hopped into his truck near Sim's Store and took off East. He made it half a mile
before seeing something...
He recalls walking up to an iron gate and being startled to see that a UFO jumped up out of the hollar in front of him shaped like a sombrero. Round
on the bottom, oval on top. He fled to his truck and tried to radio the boys that he had seen something, only to find out his radio was fried.

.........

From here the story goes on about another object that zoomed up a valley and was witnessed by independent people three states apart.

The story is fascinating and once again, occured in 1977.

Three decades removed and considering the circumstances of these last two threads I have written up, I'd say, if nothing else, I'm further away from
any real understanding of what these are.

so it was around 3:30 am I was out in the Northwestern sticks. I was dozing off to sleep, and a flash caught my eye. It reflected off the corner of
the room opposite from the windows.

I looked out, and four little fire like balls were literally floating down from the sky into the tree line; about 500m out. They literally looked as
though they should have been moving faster as they had almost undulating comet type tails, but were moving slow.

No! no drugs, or alcohol.

Any ways it freaked me out. They all floated down into the trees in the distance, and that was it.

I kept watching beyond the meadow into the tree line....of course for ET to come storming out in stormtrooper gear, but nothing. I stayed up until
dawn, and nothing.

Like I said, it freaked me out. I've seen some oddities for sure. Many "blips" all night long; many nights. I've heard People call those
satellites, but I haven't seen any proof of that.

For a few days in June there was a huge bright star; a literal bright star that flew across the sky, and looked to curve, and go down over the next
mountain ridge over.........not over the horizon, but closer.

It was anywhere between 9:45 to 10:30 at night. I didn't have a video camera to get it good, but I did see it.

I've heard the Inland Northwest, or Western Montana mountains are a hot spot, and I agree now

I think I might ask my grandmother about this. My family has always resided in Newton County which is Macs neighbor. Perhaps she might be able to give
a little more information. After all, she's a one-armed, red afro-rockin, 60 somethin yea old.

thanks for the post. Never realised UFO sightings
happened that close to home.

Yeah, '77 was a big year. Mass sightings all over the world.
Did you catch this thread www.abovetopsecret.com... took place around the same time just a few minutes drive down the road in Arkansas and a few
months later.

Yet another great thread on a incident I did not know about. Thank you for your recent contribution to the UFO forum, they are not unappreciated

PS: Don't worry about threads not getting recognition, sometime even good ones like this get overlooked by the masses for whatever reasons. It really
doesn't matter now that we have the ATS chronology, which this is going into, like your other one.

Great thread, Jay! And very good job on connecting these two flaps we've been discussing.

I noticed in one of the reports a "big orange glow" was mentioned. Orange and Orbs always catch my attention. Especially when the words pulsating or
plasma are used because of my own sighting.

How prevalent this color is in reports through time. "Fiery globes" and "Molten Metal" descriptions. John Dee encountered the fiery globe in a
vision..

Very interesting that they developed a C.B. radio ufo reporting system! How cool. Missouri really is the "show me" state! Then there's
high-strangeness and Men in Green! Is "waxing and waning," in the following case the same as "pulsating" I wonder?

According to the witnesses, they were headed to the farm and noticed some peculiar red lights in the distance. Coming closer, the lights rose
in the air directly in front of their truck and proceeded to shine lights on their truck. Meanwhile, a "man" dressed in green coveralls ran down the
hill towards the highway waving his arm at the two...until he was eventually standing right beside the highway.

Mind you this is nearly midnight and according to the witnesses this man in coveralls is waving at them in SUNGLASSES. The witnesses couldn't tell
how the sunglasses adhered to his face as he appeared to have no ears! And oh yeah, he was wearing a skull-cap (pulled so tight that there wasn't a
wrinkle in it.)

So Lawrence sits there for an hour watching this orb wax and wane until it finally disappears (this is apparently the same orb phantom went to chase
at his house).[/quote]

To be honest, I had forgotten all about this thread until you wrote your brilliant Project Identification thread!

Sure seems to me that the times, locations, reports, and well, everything line up for a direct match!
Seems as if the anomaly, whatever it is, started out in Piedmont, stayed there for YEARS, then just left town and headed for McDonald County (the
southwestern most county in Missouri). Interestingly enough, around the same time there was another wave that occured in my home county of Carroll
County, Arkansas which is only two counties southeast of McDonald County. Well, not really a "wave" per se, but a mass sighting that lasted over two
hours.

I still think a neat project would be to track all of these waves for that 10 year span I mentioned in your thread. '67 to '77.

Maybe I will get
on that one of these days.

Thanks for the thread bump too, man. Always cool to see an old thread resurrected.

Peace

ETA: I definitely get the impression of a strobing light when I read that description. Sounds a lot like the encounter you had, only a different
color.

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